Paul Crossley
Emperor on the World Stage
In the last five years, a series of spectacular international loan exhibitions have
thrown a wholly new light on the artistic patronage of the great monarchs who
dominated northern European art in the late 14th and the 15th centuries: Gothic
Art for England 1400 - 1547, in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2003;
Paris 1400 - The Arts under Charles VI, held at the Louvre in 2004; Art from the
Court of Burgundy 1364 - 1419, held in Dijon also in 2004; Gothic Art in Slovakia, in
Bratislava 2003 - 4; and most recently, Prague: The Crown of Bohemia 1347 - 1437,
which opened in New York in 2005 and is now under display in Prague. All these
monarchs - Henry V of England, Philip the Good of Burgundy, Charles VI of France,
Charles IV of Luxembourg - and their courts contributed to the spectacular flowering
of what we used to call the International Gothic Style. But one great international
and royal voice was, until now, curiously silent: the voice of Hungary and
of its flamboyant, cultured and politically assiduous king and emperor, Sigismund
of Luxembourg (1387 - 1437). In my experience, Hungary had always been the
eminence gris of later medieval European art - a country of exquisite, but
mysterious culture. When I was a student in Cracow, many years ago, my Polish
professor, when asked about a particularly exquisite late medieval or early
Renaissance object in Poland, would reply, with hushed wonder: "Ah, that is
Hungarian". But how, or why, or when it was Hungarian always remained a
mystery. Now, thanks to this spectacular exhibition, Sigismundus rex et imperator,
Hungary's vital contribution to the international "court culture" of later medieval
and early Renaissance Christendom has been magnificently recognized.
The sheer size and international scope of this enterprise makes it one of the
most significant exhibitions of recent decades to be held in Hungary. One hundred
and twenty institutions, from 19 countries, are lending a total of about 400
objects. The international range is hardly surprising, since the hero of this exhibition,
Sigismund of Luxembourg, was a king and emperor who bestrode the
world stage. His coins, seals, medallions and the vivid portraits of him gathered in
this exhibition, particularly the profile by Pisanello, present a universal, knightly
figure from some medieval Romance, surrounded by the trappings of a luxury
culture. The vast hall of his palace in Buda - a palace which rivalled Windsor,
Avignon and the Louvre - was the envy of ambassadors; the sculptures discovered
there in 1974 - some akin to the work of Claus Sluter and André Beauneveu, some
to Austrian models - all count among the most sophisticated figure carving of
their date anywhere in Europe.
Sigismund's knowledge of humanist Italian culture, like his father Charles IV's,
was precocious. His journey to Rome for the imperial crown in 1431 - 3, and
the exotic attire of his retinue, attracted the attentions of Pisanello and Filarete.
Masolino came to Hungary, though nothing of his work survives here. The close
relations, cultivated by Sigismund, between his court goldsmiths and those in
northern Italy explain the precocious use of Italian filigree enamel in Hungary,
to be seen in the exquisite Transylvanian host reliquary and the spectacular
reliquary bust of St Ladislas - both in the exhibition. Sigismund's foundation of
the Order of the Dragon - similar to the chivalric Orders of the Garter in England
and the Golden Fleece in Burgundy - gave a new sense of identity to the
Hungarian aristocracy, and - combined with his motif of the fiery cross - elevated
Sigismund into a second Constantine, a crusader defending Christendom from the
very real menace of the Turks. Dragon emblems pepper the objects in section 4
of the exhibition.
This exhibition dispels the old caricature of Sigismund as a flamboyant knighterrant,
or as a 'foreigner king', called the "Czech pig" in an attack on his foreign
entourage in 1401. The exhibits show him as a legislator, a founder of Buda's
university, an avid reader of military treatises (some exhibited here), a tough
diplomat who enjoyed the intellectual challenges of politics, and a reformer who
listened to his Franciscans' prophecies of a utopian empire enjoying universal
peace. He was the last king to try to invest the title of Holy Roman Emperor with
real meaning. Above all, he brought Hungary into European politics and allowed
it to participate in the great issues of the age: Hussitism, the Turkish threat and,
most importantly, the international Council of Constance - where Sigismund's
central position was commemorated in Ulrich Richental's Chronicle of the Council,
a manuscript owned by Sigismund, a later copy of which is exhibited here.
Sigismund, like his father Charles IV, was not a great bibliophile; but he learned
from his father the importance of harnessing political claims to public imagery,
as well as how to strengthen dynastic ties by generous artistic patronage. The
superb reliquary bust of King St Ladislas, which Sigismund gave to Nagyvárad
(Oradea) in 1406, was modelled on his father's bust of Charlemagne given to Aix-la-Chapelle and was calculated to cement Sigismund's relations with this
most popular Hungarian patron saint - just as his decision to be buried at
Nagyvárad cathedral, next to St Ladislas, conjoined the two figures in eternity.
Paul Crossley
is Professor at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London.
His current research interests are Gothic art in Eastern Europe as much as in the West.
The above is the shortened text of an address given at the opening of the Sigismundus
exhibition in Budapest.
